It’s Lent. And so it begins: Jesus’
long, inexorable journey to Jerusalem, and to his death.
We all know what’s coming. That’s
what accounts for the generally somber nature of this season. He’s going to the
cross to die. For us.
Lent is a crucial time of year for
Christians, in a very literal sense. The word “crucial” comes from the Latin
word crux, or cross. Two rough-hewn timbers — the upright, wedged into a
square hole in the rock, and the cross-shaft, lashed to it with cords of rope —
mark the intersection of human history. It’s not just the Via Dolorosa, Jesus’ famous “way of sorrows,” that leads to
Calvary. It’s every road that’s ever been traveled. It’s your road, and mine. Sooner
or later, we must all come to terms with the more troubling aspects of life —
its darkness as well as its light, its sufferings as well as its triumphs.
Calvary is an appropriate focus for
our philosophical musings. But there’s another dark interlude in the story of
Jesus’ passion, one we don’t think about nearly so often. If we think about it
at all, it’s because we’ve heard it mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed: “He
descended into hell.” Some translations render it, “He descended to the dead.”
Jesus is headed into the darkest,
most God-forsaken place imaginable.
The words “he descended into hell”
are among the most misunderstood in all the Creed. They refer to a passage from
1 Peter, which says, “[Christ] was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in
the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in
prison, who in former times did not obey....”
Later on, that same book says, “The
gospel was proclaimed even to the dead.”1
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